A review of the research literature shows that research on the effects of male retirement on the relationship between husbands and wives is largely based on US populations. Moreover, there is a lack of recent empirical evidence on the marital relationship in middle-class, middle-aged couples living in the UK. A study of anticipatory thoughts about retirement voiced by 306 retiring senior managers and their wives is described. The most frequent focus of their hopes and fears was potential change in the marital relationship after retirement. Three times as many wives as husbands referred to their marriages as they speculated about retirement. A content analysis revealed four major themes. The most frequent was change in the emotional quality of the relationship followed by the conflict between spending time together and the loss of personal space. There was less emphasis on the implications for household management and the possibility of widow(er)hood. The verbatim comments also illustrate some other facets of marriage among middle-aged, middle-class UK couples in the 1990s.

Comparable networks surveys identified the informal relationships which provide social support to older people in urban Japan, provincial Japan, and urban Australia. Spouses, daughters, and sons were major providers of expressive support in all areas. Older Australians had more expressive support from friends while older Japanese had more instrumental support from daughters-in-law. The gender of the older people and their close ties were highly significant in all areas. The many similarities in the social support patterns contrast sharply with East and West differences in cultural prescripts and living arrangements. In these two advanced countries with long life expectancies and high living standards, older people's interpersonal relationships may be converging on the basis of selective affection and choice, rather than obligation, with individuals in and beyond the household and family.

A minority of older people who move into long-term institutional care are married and have spouses who continue living in the community. The financial complexities and consequences for a couple in this situation deserve to be more widely recognised. Data from the Family Expenditure Survey on the incomes of older married couples are used to examine the financial implications for couples of one spouse entering residential or nursing home care, taking into account local authority procedures for assessing residents' contributions to charges and Income Support rules as they apply to both spouses. We look in particular at the consequences of alternative ways couples might share their incomes, and alternative treatments of such sharing by local authorities and the Department of Social Security. We demonstrate that wives remaining at home are more likely to have low incomes and have recourse to means-tested state benefits if their husbands enter residential care than husbands who remain at home when their wives enter care. Local authorities are likely to be able to require larger contributions to their care costs from husbands than wives. On average, wives whose husbands enter residential care are best off financially when their combined income and savings are shared equally, but this leaves husbands with the least money to contribute to their care costs. If it is the wife who enters care the situation is reversed.

The changing nature of family life has become a major issue in contemporary Britain. Concerns that change will bring moral decline and social fragmentation are countered by a more optimistic view which focuses on a future of more equitable and flexible family ties. Research drawing on area-based data in Luton amongst older, middle-aged and younger people with experience of family change suggests that so far as inter-generational relations, caring, and transfers of family wealth are concerned, traditional attitudes towards blood ties, household independence and care and support survive alongside new step relationships. The research also suggests that although several respondents had more than one generation of experience of family change, the language of step relationships is still one which is not yet completely accepted, or one with which people feel completely at ease.